Days of Future Past Connects All Previous X-Men Films

[Fanghawk]

Days of Future Past Connects All Previous X-Men Films

The upcoming X-Men movie will share a continuity with all previous entries, for better or worse.

For many X-Men movie fans, <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/3371-X-Men-First-Class>First Class was a breath of fresh air. It broke new ground for the franchise, revitalized the spirit of the original films, and gave some fascinating interpretations of Xavier and Magneto to boot. Perhaps the most significant ingredient of its success was the decision to <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/8956-Next-Class>rework the franchise's entire continuity, which allowed First Class to act as a prequel and as a reboot. It's a great idea, allowing fans to selectively pretend that continuity exists while ignoring the more disappointing entries of the series. Unfortunately, Bryan Singer may be bringing that chapter to a close. The returning X-Men director has revealed that Days of Future Past will draw from all films in the franchise, including Last Stand and Wolverine Origins, potentially making First Class part of an officially shared canon.

"I'm taking into account every movie," Singer said. "I'm not just grabbing my first two movies and First Class and smashing them together. I'm taking into account the entire universe as it's been laid out so far on the screen, and really respecting it and trying to work with that. People took things in various directions, so there's some clean-up. But ultimately I'm not just ignoring them either."

Since Days of Future Past will depict an alternate future our heroes are trying to prevent, viewers probably shouldn't expect direct acknowledgement of events from previous films. That said, a faithful adaptation of the original comic storyline by necessity creates a significant amount of overlap. Senator Kelly's mutant legislation from the original movie is what prompted Future Past's apocalyptic Sentinel attacks, opening the door to later events that many fans would prefer to forget.

Whatever effect this has on Days of Future Past, I have to admit I actually respect Singer's decision. It would have been incredibly easy for him to decide that X-Men and X2, his own contributions to the series, were all the canon Days of Future Past needed. The fans certainly wouldn't have blamed him, but instead Singer appears willing to respect the work of his fellow creators. That's pretty classy on his part, and may allow for a more varied movie in the long run.

Even better, if this means that Wolverine Origins is the terrifying alternate future mutants are trying to prevent, that probably wouldn't hurt either.

Source: <a href=http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/01/28/bryan-singer-talks-days-of-future-past>IGN

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[Froggy Slayer]

Wow, this is going to get pretty complex. I'm actually hoping that they go down the 'two alternate universe' routes rather than trying to weld the continuity mess into one singular universe.

 

[Fappy]

Why won't he just let us forget X3 and Wolverine exist!? He must be a madman.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, it's what I more or less expect. To date I can't think of many major companies that have decided to officially retcon a product and say "this never happened" and admit the terribleness of their own work. Sometimes they try and ignore it, but they don't generally say flat out "this doesn't apply, this is now the continuity, forget that garbage". Much to the annoyance of comic, movie, video game, etc... fans who have demanded this on many occasions and wound up seeing entire franchises die due to corperate arrogance. For a while I thought EA might be the first ones to grow up enough to back down with the ME3 ending, but it didn't happen.

At any rate, I have mixed opinions about the entire idea, just as I had mixed opinions about the comics event. You simply have to gloss over too much and put it in the backround to handle something on this scale. The limited scope of the movies might seem to make things easier to deal with (less of a universe to deal with) but at the same time serve to sort of undermine the event because even with Magneto's stunts in the last (truely awful) movie there just aren't enough mutants or events going on to make me think that anything close to this level of reaction would be nessicary. It was great when they wanted to make Kelly seem like a complete moron, but if they are doing it "right" like in the comics they would have to present a situation where using The Sentinels actually seems fairly rational in response to what's going on (and then goes wrong) right now globally releasing a skyskraper sized robo-police force seems like it would be unjustified stupidity of the "well, because the plot demands it" variety.

I'm of the opinion they probably should have just let the X-men franchise die gracefully, on a relatively high note. Perhaps rebooting it down the road as part of the marvel films series. With some better core writing, and coordination with the other marvel movies.

On a somewhat pessimistic level, I actually kind of suspect the point of this might be to try and create some kind of event that manages to merge the existing X-men franchise into the current continuity by the end (victory resulting in an alternate timeline or whatever) allowing them to use popular actor/character combos like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine without causing too many questions. Basically creating such a giant morass of suck so extreme that it hopefully cancels itself out and fanboys buy it.

That said given Tony Stark's involvement in the Sentinel project I suppose it's always possible they already combined the movies, and there will be a gimmick ending to "Iron Man 3" where he'll be seen helping to develop the technologies for "Project Wideawake". If anyone wondered why The Sentinels were so tough... yeah, Iron Man pretty much made them to beat down super heroes (coordinating with a few other super geniuses). Of course none of these brainiacs bothered to consider any oversights "in case they went rogue" as far as I could tell, and their involvement was more or less left to the backburner for most of the event (glossed over, or simply mentioned as having been killed when the odds of that would be minimal, I seem to remember vaguely they mentioned The Sentinels killed the Avengers including Sersei and Drax The Destroyer... (uh huh, I buy that) and Doctor Strange and his whole crowd on both sides of the moral meter were oddly unaccounted for despite some truely extreme power levels... standard marvel event problems).

 

[D Moness]

I really love bryan singer's work but nothing in the world(this universe or any other) will make me believe X3 happened.

 

[SonicWaffle]

The X-men movies belong to Fox and do not connect to Disney's Avengers universe.

On the other hand, weren't there rumours of a potential Spider-Man cameo in a Disney film? Perhaps the studios might consider easing up on such considerations in the name of making a fuckton of money.

 

[DevilWithaHalo]

Do you know why 'First Class' was a breath of fresh air? Because it wasn't a movie starring Wolverine. The picture used in the article already has me worried that once again, Wolverine will be the primary protagonist. It had character's with actual motivations and back stories; not ham string super soldier amnesia fisted into the plot. Great, such an interesting character; he can't die and he scratches stuff. You simply can't sympathize for the character, so there's no emotional investment.

Relegate him to a supporting role, or you'll just fuck up the movie and continue to piss people off.

 

[Therumancer]

[


The X-men movies belong to Fox and do not connect to Disney's Avengers universe.

Not entirely true. Disney's contract gives them control over the entire Marvel Empire and IP structure. Who something belongs to or the details of previous contracts are by their nature extremely ambigious, and I believe they have veto authority like Marvel did, along with a degree of creative control, over anything produced using those IPs.

You might be saying "but I heard differantly!", and you might have, but the thing is that Disney can make life difficult for anyone who doesn't do things their way. A key point of contension over this buy out was how Disney's big Amusement Park rival "Universal Studios" has the rights to Marvel characters and IPs for their "Islands Of Adventure" Them Park. A sticking point for Disney as you might imagine, and there have been some battles about it. Due to the contract, Disney can't force them to close it down and remove all Marvel characters and likenesses from their park for
a few years, BUT they can exercise creative control over what they do with those properties. Meaning that when Universal decides to trot out their actors dressed as super heroes, has people man the rides in characters, etc.. Disney has final say on what they can or cannot do, how the characters look, and even a say on what merchandise can or cannot be sold in their stores (and by it's nature controls the source of merchandise like comic books and the like). Making things about as uncomfortable as they can be for Universal, which is honestly one of the biggest movie/Theme Park powerhouses out there.

Fox is a big deal, yes, but not compared to Disney, and the bottom line is that Disney wants to pretty much exploit of all of Marvel's properties and build them into it's own multi-media franchise. The odds of Fox doing anything with X-men without Disney having a direct say (revealed or not) are minimal, likewise the odds of Disney allowing Fox to produce a competing Marvel property, one that doesn't fit into their plans, are minimal.

One sticking point here is that Marvel itself tended to be a bit on the jerkish side with their own contracts. They generally don't just sign the rights to anything over. This has lead to fights with PnP RPG companies like TSR over things like the "Marvel RPG" (and I believe it's later successors as well), and fairly recently over the Marvel MMO (not the Marvel Heroes one under development). Champions Online began life as an official Marvel Universe MMO, sort of like what DCUO was going to be, but with Marvel characters, but Marvel pulled the plug part way through due to changing media plans and not wanting to give that much control over their properties to someone else, leading to Cryptic looking for another liscence and they grabbed the Champions PnP RPG one.

The point I'm getting at here is that it's all the same now, in an almost Lovecraftian way. Marvel is Disney, Disney is Marvel, a perfect blending of two of the most popular yet jerkwadish corperate entertainment entities ever. Sure it might seem like a company like Fox can, or should have independance, but it's just another mask of Nylarthotep, and we have finally learned that Nylarthotep is Mickey Mouse. Any who stand against this truth, believing themselves immune or independant, are doomed for insanity as they are dragged into the pits of madness and despair to the enchanting sounds of "Steamboat Willy" and "It's a Small, Small World".

 

[Verlander]

No way! I was talking about this just today when I saw Ellen Page has signed up to revive her role as Shadowcat.
I imagine they are going to have to pull some "different dimension" bull to get around various continuity errors though *cough*Beast*cough*

 

[Lunar Templar]

well ... the Wolverine movie tie in game (which was better then the movie in a weird twist)pretty much ended with Sentinels walking around killing things.

 

[PunkRex]

I love it when even the creator of something has the same thaughts as everyone else, I may hate X3 and Origins but good on him for being so classy.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Why? All of them sucked but First Class and even it had a few to many WTF moments.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Why won't he just let us forget X3 and Wolverine exist!? He must be a madman.

If he makes them irrelevant then I'm all for it.

 

[Sylveria]

Even First Class pretends Wolverine Origins didn't happen.. why would you want to acknowledge that monstrosity exists.

 

[Therumancer]

[


The contract between Fox and Marvel happened just before Marvel's bankruptcy when they couldn't be as stingy with the terms as they would like (needing money does that). Disney buying Marvel doesn't change pre-existing contracts, Fox and Sony can do what they like and Disney has no say.

That's what Universal thought, they were wrong. It all comes down to whether they piss off The Mouse with what they plan to do. I mean it's fine if you don't believe me, but we'll see what happens. To be blunt the way the game is played we won't know until the films are actually released and what state they are in. Simply because one of the "fun" things companies do in cases like this is wait until after a movie is done to lower the boom, then they keep it tied up for years in legal battles, so it gets a lame DVD release years after anyone cares.

To be honest with you, it's been suspected Fox in paticular crapped out their last couple of movies just so they wouldn't lose the contract, but did so when they were under little opposition from an entity like Disney.

Maybe your right, mayber your wrong, personally when it comes to this kind of dirt, I'm betting on The Mouse. Chances are if such a movie is released smoothly it's going to be with tacit Disney approval, and play to what they want.

I get why you (and a lot of people) want me to be wrong, I mean the merger between Marvel and Disney isn't exactly great for the Marvel properties we all love... but it is what it is. Sony has more of a chance against Disney if they really care, but at the end of the day I expect they will probably wind up negotiating to sell any rights they have to Disney rather than fight. I could be wrong, but Sony usually seems smart enough to understand a losing proposition. Fox probably wants to risk another quick X-men cash infusion, I suspect in the end they will either work with Disney behind the scenes, or wind up in a late game mess. Either way, I expect we're going to see the X-men back in Disney's hands within a few years. I'll also be surprised if Universal makes it all the way to the end of their contract before they replace their "Marvel" island with something else. Your rights as a contract holder generally don't amount to crap when The Mouse decides it wants something you have. Universal has done a far better job of competing with Disney in it's own back yard than most groups, and even it's kind of gotten pwned here.

 

[ASan83]

I'd be happy if everything that happened after X2 never happened, but this could be interesting as well. At least it can't be any worse than what's going on in the comics.